Kushel's funeral Oration
by Petula Petunia
Summary: Levi knows she's dead before knowing he loved her so much.


**English is not my first language. But I am trying to practice a little here. Comments, corrections, advice and so, are really appreciated.**

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 **Kushel's funeral Oration**

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Levi knows she's dead before knowing he loved her so much.

On this island of prostitutes —where he came into the world, love is a crust of bread whereby wild dogs fight.

Levi has heard about love, between the walls of the brothel. He has seen it, on the beds.

It's a sibling-feeling. Bastard like him, it's housed in women as a false hope, and the faceless carrier disappears as it appeared. It is sweet and the next moment becomes blows, or customers who leave without paying or take the opportunity to steal.

This bipolar and tired love, he understands it. He loves his mother this way.

The scent emitted from her chest while he is dozing on her lap brings peace and care, —and often the mixed breath of a client from an hour ago makes him convulse, kicking in the air and biting the arm of his mother.

Sometimes he wishes he could go back to her belly and forget the world. But he has seen what those men do to his old lair; and wonders whether it will be a warm and peaceful retreat, or will have been deformed into a putrid hole of all kinds of fumes.

He won't know what is marasmus or starvation until several years. But the weariness on his shoulders is like a vulture hovering, waiting for him to close his eyes.

He does not consider it a bad idea. Close his eyelids and let the vulture take him flying to that place. But he doesn't know if that place would have his mother, and perhaps all her clients. If that's Heaven, he prefers to stay in this Hell.

He looks at his mother again and again. She looks horrible, like the witches from the tales. But at least those witches had powers they used to keep their bellies full and their bodies free from diseases, even if they were the ugliest on the story. He wishes his mother was a witch and not a skeleton with skin, lying on a dirty bed.

Levi wonders how long has he slept with that corpse. Perhaps more than he can believe. He also wonders when he stopped seeking the warmth of his mother's body and began to curl up at the end of the bed, shivering in that corner he expected had not been contaminated as the rest of the bed by customers.

In the brothel beauty is an unspoken word. Because it's not what customers want. So Levi does not know if his mother was beautiful or not. The last memory he have of she, says no. The lack of nutrients, in general, says that none of these women have an entire body where the word beauty can be used by the pimp on the business.

Levi knows about sex because he has seen it. Groans, murmurs, muffled sounds coming from the whole house. Rending cries, pleas, dragged bodies. Levi has learned to walk in those corridors, wary of ghosts and demons lurking behind every door. And that is why he has never been afraid of stories of ghosts. He was born in a cursed house and knows too well the faces of the creatures that hide in it.

He has some disgust towards love. Or maybe towards sex? He is not sure if there is a difference. But while he remembers having to decide between pretending he is playing in a corner while her mother works, or getting out into the hall to see others work, he remembers certain friendly customer. A gentle hand that messes up his hair, and hugs the fragile waist of his mother. Almost immediately he feels disgusted. He wants to tear his hairs because he is pretty sure are dirtied on invisible fluids from the filthy liar hands of that client.

But he is tired, tired of being tired. _Love, sex, mother,_ come to his head as words and not as feelings, because he is too exhausted to feel them. His eyes stares the bed they shared. Perhaps he himself was the worst customer of his mother, because he never paid for the services of all those years of lying with her.

He is confused. What was he? Was the son or an indebted client? What are they going to do with the body? If he has some strength, in a few hours he would stand and take his mother through the streets of the underground district, until that distant hillside where a hole in the rock ceiling lets the light flows and the green grows challenger. He would leave her dream undisturbed there. Perhaps he himself would rest a few minutes beside her then.

But only if he doesn't close his eyes now. Is not like famine has taken full control of him at this point. No yet. But he could hurry the event, by choice. And yet, he does not like the idea that the owner is going to hire a couple of guys to get their bodies out of the room and leave them nowhere. Although his mother looks like she doesn't care to end like that. Maybe when you die, the earthly things are not important.

Levi breathes through his mouth as a sigh. He thinks sex is nasty and just brings misfortune; the worst of them is that one that looks harmless and comes in the form of a ball of pink flesh and vibrant crying. Levi breathes again through his mouth. Love is another misfortune; it hurts more when it makes suffer the one who loves you. What was his mother thinking when she brought him to life? What kind of selfish perfidious woman gave birth to him to use him as a candle in a world of darkness? Levi feels almost completely melted; the flame may not last longer. And frankly, his mother is no longer going to need his light wherever she is now.

What a cruel woman of a smile like fresh sheets; bleach fiery caresses in her palms; of stinky vinegar and sandalwood hugs; rotten kisses flavored with honey as lipstick.

Levi knows she's dead before knowing he loved her so much.


End file.
